Studies in Congestive Heart Failure

The cardinal symptoms of heart disease are dyspnea, edema, and pain. The recent important publication of Keefer and Resnik (1928) has done much to remove the subject of cardiac pain from the realm of controversy, and to lead to a better understanding of the mechanism by which it is produced, and hence, to a clearer clinical concept of its significance. Unlike cardiac pain, edema and dyspnea are ordinarily indications of congestive heart failure and although these two symptoms have been the subject of many valuable studies there is not yet entire agreement as to the exact physiological disturbances which lead to their production.